British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday that violence in Iraq would diminish with the return of power to Iraqis, as leaders of the Shiite Muslim majority criticized the pace of the transition.
Straw, whose visit to Baghdad was unannounced for security reasons, said he did not wish to play down the scale of the unrest that has plagued Iraq since the British and US spring invasion, and sharply increased during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan that ended this week.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"Of course everybody understands that there are security problems and I for one have never sought to underestimate those," said Straw, speaking inside the coalition's heavily fortified city-center administrative compound.
"But what I am told, and I believe, is that life for a very large number of people in Iraq is considerably better in terms of their living standards and would be infinitely better if and when we can go [sic] on top of the security situation.
"One way in which -- and a crucial way in which -- you do that is by ensuring as rapid a transfer of power as possible," Straw told a hastily arranged 10-minute news conference.
Straw said his two-day visit had started on Tuesday and was also taking him to the British-controlled southern city of Basra, which had been a relative haven of tranquility until a rash of attacks earlier this month.
Since Straw's last visit in early July, the coalition has accelerated its plans for the return of sovereignty to Iraqis, abandoning its previous insistence on prior elections under a new constitution approved by referendum.
But the announcement of the policy U-turn on Nov. 15 failed to quell armed resistance to the US-led occupation. Ramadan opened and closed with waves of suicide bombings against police stations and other soft targets in the restive Sunni belt that extends north and west from the capital.
And even Shiite politicians late Tuesday stepped up their criticism of the coalition's new plans to hand back power by June next year.
A leading Shiite political leader said the community's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, wanted to review the agreement reached between US overseer Paul Bremer and the US-installed interim leadership.
"Ayatollah Sistani has some reservations on the document -- he has said it doesn't give a role to the Iraqi people and should be reconsidered," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), after a meeting with the religious leader.
Straw met four members of the interim leadership yesterday to discuss the plans and the security situation in Iraq, one of the quartet said.
The four were the current holder of the rotating chairmanship of the Governing Council, Kurdish politician Jalal Talabani, and three other pro-US politicians -- Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord and Sunni Muslim politician Naseer Chaderchi.
Chalabi and Allawi are both Shiites, but they are secularists and their formerly exiled movements do not have the support of SCIRI.
Chaderchi said the four asked for Straw's help in drafting the Fundamental Law that is to govern Iraq's administration until a permanent constitution has been approved by a constitutional convention to be elected in 2005.
"We asked for their help in drafting the Fundamental Law and the constitution since they have extensive experience in Iraq," Chaderchi said, referring to British domination of the country's government from 1918 to 1958.
He said Talabani had briefed Straw "mainly on the security and economic situations," as well as coalition reconstruction efforts.
"We also discussed with Straw relations with the neighbors of Iraq," Chaderchi said.
Coalition officials had predicted that even their new plans would fail to satisfy Iraqi demands for a rapid return of sovereignty.
"We expect more political leaders to become more critical after the [Nov. 15] agreement," a coalition civilian spokesman told a briefing earlier this month. "It's their way of gaining credibility."
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